


Two Earthly Kingdoms

by Aphoride



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ambition, Bitterness, Blood purity, Community: HPFT, Dark Magic, Death Eaters, Dreams, F/M, Greek Mythology Themes, Jealousy, Love Themes, M/M, Orpheus Story, Possessiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2018-07-19 01:13:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7338601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aphoride/pseuds/Aphoride
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His blood burns in the night, crackling with power and he dreams of it turning gold, of two crowns on his head, and a throne of onyx. </p>
<p>In the end, blood only runs red and crowns melt in the glare of the sun.</p>
<p>[For Isobel.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Earthly Kingdoms

Your Two Earthly Kingdoms Turn To Rubble In The End  
  
In the deep still woods upon the Thracian mountains…  
  
_i_  
  
He sat and read and learned, devouring book after book – textbooks and journals he loaned from the library, tomes of vellum and leather he plucked from his housemates’ trunks as they slept – until his mind was abuzz with words and his fingers tingled, sparked with power, testimony to the fire in his blood – unmistakably there, whether others deigned to believe it or not. The sun would rise and set on him as he crouched on a fallen log, spine curling over, squinting in the dark and light both, until the stars and moon rose and he had to go inside.  
  
Even then, slipping back inside before a flick of Dumbledore’s wand sealed the doors shut, he would feel the thrum of power in his veins, almost hear the sound of it crackling as it went, and in those moments, he felt unbeatable. No one – not Potter, not Black, not Rosier or any of his wretched housemates – could defeat him then. More than a mere slave, or figure in the crowd, he was Zeus in Olympus, king of the castle.  
  
It was night, he was young and powerful and felt more himself, more what he should be, in those moments than he ever had done before.  
  
It was his, his, all his, this magic inside him: his birth-right, passed down from his mother, overriding his father’s tainted, smoky blood. He was a Prince, in name and in blood – he had read the books for himself, seen the list of the sacred twenty-eight, seen the pictures of what his mother’s family had been, what he could have had – and what could be better than that? Blood will out, they always drawled in the common room, and he would only ever smile and agree, because it did in the end, as he knew well.  
  
For the battle against smoke and dust and dirt, his blood was all the stronger for it. His fire, his magic burned hotter and brighter than any of theirs.  
  
They knew it, too, or so he thought, for what other reason could there be for the way they would glance at him, quick and sharp and almost nervous, as he scribbled down incantations, as he spoke of curses and formulae and justice. Most telling of all was the way they would flinch – all of them, the star prince and the avenging angel and the nymphs who worshipped at their feet – when he smiled and said that maybe he too would join the Dark Lord one day, would take the long walk down into the underworld and swear his soul to the revolution, sit at the banqueting table in Olympus when glory and honour and pride had been restored.  
  
It was almost as though they were scared; worried that one day, he’d just snap, that he’d lash out and melt the flesh of their bones in a single, long scream. They didn’t really know, him, though; he hadn’t been foolish enough to let them get that close.  
  
Really, he thought, mouth curling as he watched them – a little court of nymphs pretending to be kings – sprawled around the fireplace, all elegance and refinement and practiced hatred, they didn’t deserve to get that close.  
  
_ii_  
  
Forbidden. It was forbidden. She was forbidden. They were forbidden.  
  
Yet, he couldn’t help it: there was something so addicting, so intoxicating, about things which were forbidden. It was the same thrill which drew him to sneaking around the school at night, to snatching things out of his dormmates’ trunks while they slept, to stealing supplies out of the Potions cupboard, only this was stronger, far more dangerous, and so far, far more heady. The fear and excitement, locked together, would set his blood to singing, an endless aria playing in his head, all around him as he watched and stared and sighed, ever just the friend, never anything more.  
  
She was a mudblood. Not his friend – not any more, a voice would always whisper in his head, not anymore and it’s all your fault – not his girlfriend, not even an acquaintance. Just another mudblood in the school, another thief taking the rightful place of a pureblood, her veins stuffed full of rubble and rust and lies.  
  
Mudblood, mudblood, mudblood. He chanted it in his head whenever he saw her, made sure to sneer at her properly in the corridors, laugh loudly at the derogatory comments Rosier and Wilkes made, and told himself that the jolt he felt whenever she flinched or blinked or bit her lip was pleasure, not pain or guilt.  
  
She had been born a mudblood, she would die a mudblood, and if he wanted to be crowned in the underworld, perhaps even in Olympus itself, and set on his rightful throne, then she would never, could never be his.  
  
It didn’t really help, though; he still dreamed about her at night, with her red hair and green eyes and the soft, happy smile she so often wore even then, and he thought of a thousand different ways he could apologise, a thousand different ways he could try to make it up to her (he had called her a name, and it was true, yes, but truth hurt, and when she was hurt she was stubborn), to make her give in and understand the reality of the situation.  
  
He was better, better than any other boy in the school – he who was half a god by blood, if not by name – how could she not see that? How could she think he was worse, think he was just the same as all the others in his house, nothing worthy of her attention; at least, not any more. She would forgive him his mistake, that one word which had changed everything, and then they could have forbidden, could be forbidden, and he would save her from the fate her birth had written in her blood.  
  
Then she would love him, because he had saved her, and he would laugh as Black and Wilkes and Rosier scowled and retched as they bowed to her, his resurrected Queen of the dark.  
  
_iii_  
  
Summer came, his last summer of childhood, of innocence and youth before he would emerge, fully-grown and ready, more ready than he could ever be, to make his assault on his throne, to claim back his birth-right. It was beautiful, as summers are: rainy and damp – so much so that the grounds flooded and squelched underfoot, a living watercolour – and filled with a sense of waiting, of anticipation, which made his skin crawl and prickle and shudder.  
  
Fate was coming, resting on the wings of Time, and oh, how he couldn’t wait for it to arrive.  
  
It seemed like everyone else could feel it too, sense it as it settled over the school like a cloud. Whispers flittered around the common room, echoing gently in the arched ceiling, and muscles in hands, jaws, legs twitched, jumpy and over-eager. In the corridors, younger students would scurry off to lessons, their heads down and books clutched close to their chests, wings attached to their ankles; even the older ones glanced about themselves, vigilant, their wands like swords in their hands. House colours hardened and flattened out into armour, purity held before them all like shields, and Sacred Twenty-Eight were like heroes, kings in the hallways, their names titles to be worn and loudly proclaimed.  
  
Even Potter and his gang, knitted up so closely no one knew where one of them ended and the others began, became tighter, quieter, more brooding. Black turned from sparking to thunderous, growing from a star to a comet, shooting poisonous glares at his brother in a silent war and constantly on the brink of burning out; Pettigrew couldn’t stay still, ready to flee at a moment’s notice, hopping about from foot to foot as though the coals under his feet were on fire.  
  
Perhaps they were, he thought, or perhaps they would be in the future.  
  
She wasn’t unaffected by it, either: her mother had died, quick and sudden, and he watched as she drew into herself, fading into a pale and wan replica of herself, her fire dimming to the faintest flicker in her veins.  
  
His mouth, whenever he passed her in the corridors, ‘mudblood’ on his lips and tongue, tasted of ash.  
  
He would see her, sometimes, sitting in the library, surrounded by books – slim black ones, lime green ones the size of a new-born baby, and tiny red ones you could slip into your pocket – and would spend hours upon hours debating with himself about what to do, what to say, what would be best. If he apologised, for saying what she was, for the death of her mother (which had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with the ash in her heart), he could lose any chance at gaining his true place, at reclaiming his birth-right his mother threw away. Without speaking, though, he could lose her.  
  
He wanted two kingdoms, both wonderful and beautiful, and he couldn’t decide which one he wanted more.  
  
Whenever he wondered which he should choose, tracing the Dark Mark, green and bright, that symbol of hope and promised glory, he thought of his mother, of how she had thrown away her life, her birth-right, her place on Olympus, enthroned in the underworld, for the sake of a man with dirt under his nails and gravel in his voice. She had died in the end, her body rusting and weakening, her blood turned to dust, all fire and spark crushed by love.  
  
It would not be the same for him; he would not end the same way, he told himself. He would have both kingdoms, would rule in both; it was just a matter of planning.

* * *

_Interlude: The Sacking of Thrace_  
  
They married in spring, on a day when larks sang and blossom whispered on the trees, pink and white and pretty: the peasant-girl and the demi-god. A strange pairing to be sure, but, the romantics claimed, what did that matter when love was involved? What did status matter, in the end?  
  
The truth, of course, is that it matters a lot.  
  
His friends had heard of it, announced in the Prophet as it was, and instead of sighing over the lace and satin of the bride’s dress, of how the new couple had smiled at each other as they were bonded for life and beyond death, they joked about how underneath the white, the bride’s dress ran red, about how the groom was being swallowed by quicksand, smooth and unforgiving. Lips curled in disdain and tongues boasted about how they would rescue their blood brother from the siren’s hold, how they would turn him back to the light and the truth.  
  
It was the right thing to do, they said. Ash could not be permitted to quench fire, otherwise it would flicker and fade and die, and what a waste that would be.  
  
It was the twentieth of April, 1979, and as he sat in a parlour in Knockturn Alley, young and eager and righteously inflamed, planning ascension, Severus Snape lost his first kingdom.

* * *

I will charm the Lord of the Dead…  
  
_i_  
  
Loss was bitter in his mouth, staining his teeth and cheeks with the taste of wormwood and gall, but pride and wormwood is a volatile combination. Separately, they fizz and sulk and distil, but together they burn, leaping and roaring with the strength of a hundred men, and in him they ignited his blood, ignited his skin and his soul and everything he was or ever had been. The flames twined around him, encompassing him, until he didn’t remember what it felt like before, without this hatred, without this fury.  
  
He had lost his first kingdom, he would not lose the second – could not lose the second.  
  
Down, down, he walked, the cold sinking through his skin and his flesh and into his soul, digging deep and strong, so much so that it burned rather than froze. In the walls bone-white faces grinned and crimson bloodstains leered at him, glowing and glittering in the dark: emblems of the new world and warnings to those would defy change and seek to subvert the truth, but he ignored them all. He wasn’t their target, wasn’t the one they were speaking to – he would be an acolyte, would be king here one day, and he had nothing to fear from the remains of the unworthy.  
  
It was a long time before he reached the river, the boundary between life and death, between nothing and everything, weakness and greatness, and he stared at it when he saw it first: the long, silvery snake, shrouded in mist, echoing with the screams of those who had failed. As the boat sailed slowly through the kingdom, he gazed about, taking it all in: the spectral figures who lined the banks, the endless expanse of marble columns and soft, golden fields as far as the eye could see.  
  
The promised land: a dream made flesh, a constant reminder of the future he fought for, they all fought for.  
  
There, in the hall, the Lord of the Dead sat upon his throne of onyx, crowned and anointed with the blood of the slain, and his knees creaked as he knelt, his soul rebelling, burning, shrieking that this was not his place, this was not for him. He was not made to follow.  
  
He didn’t cry as the mark burned into his flesh, that grinning promise of power and glory and a kingdom forged from flame; instead, he swallowed and bowed his head faithfully, lips forming oaths and swearing loyalty to a throne he longed to sit on.  
  
He was the first of his friends to get the mark, to shed garlands of green-and-white flowers for a pair of black, feathered wings. Eighteen and fresh out of school, he approached the Dark Lord with nothing but the clothes on his back and desperation, a scream in his soul of power, for power, and he smiled to himself as he took his place in the hall, bone-white mask obscuring his face. This was his chance, his moment to prove to them all what he was worth, what he truly was – to show he was more than what his half-ash, half-fire blood would suggest to them – and his head nearly swam from the scent of smoke as the flames roared.  
  
_ii_  
  
One by one, they came to kneel at his throne – what should, what would be his throne – in front of Lord Voldemort, and swear loyalty, fealty and adoration. Servitude in exchange for power, in exchange for the return of their glory days, long past and yet still so dear to them all.  
  
He watched from the side as they took their marks, some screaming, some crying; but all of them afraid, scalded by the power the Dark Lord wielded as it sank into their skin, branding them slaves with the sign of comradeship. Regulus Black was last, young and slender and managing to look somehow perfectly, utterly right surrounded by the dark, high pillars, head bowed as he knelt on a black-and-white chessboard floor, the true-born son of glory and honour and purity, a star on earth.  
  
Then, at last, they were all there, anointed with blood and sworn to fervour, cloaks of ambition and promised power about their shoulders, and he looked down the line and could only see rivals, not friends any longer.  
  
When the prize is immortality, there is no room for mercy.  
  
Soon enough, they were rising, rising high and fast on wings of steel and glory, above him and nearly out of sight. Of course, he thought to himself, of course they would be held more worthy, raised higher: they had names, surnames which meant something, spoke of honour and nobility and pride, and he?  
  
His surname spoke only of strange, hopeless infatuation, and the slow corruption of white-red flames with ash.  
  
So, while they paraded around the underworld palace, the heirs to the world, with goblets of wine and blood-stained robes shot through with jewel tones – house colours, kings’ colours: sapphire blue and purple and cream gold – which trailed behind them, he skulked in the corner, wrapping himself in shadows and slow burning resentment, his hands empty and clean. In his mouth, it tasted bitter and strong, with a kick at the end which brought tears to his eyes, and it reminded him of his father, made him pace like a caged animal as he thought and felt all the reasons he had to hate him, to hate them, to hate everything.  
  
Always, always, at the back of his mind was the knowledge that all this could and should, by right, be his – that he should be where they were, celebrated and adored – and that he’d already half-lost, one kingdom gone and his second under siege. He had no allies, either, in this land of snakes and half-truths, where everyone said one thing and did another, where the currency was secrets and only its master knew all.  
  
At times, he was convinced he could see, could feel the Dark Lord watching him, watching him and laughing, seeing nothing of his potential, just the smoke and rubble in his blood and the name of his father inscribed on his face.  
  
He burned, there in the darkness; he burned but no one saw, and he screamed his hatred alone.  
  
_iii_  
  
Slowly, so steadily he did not notice – and by the time he did it was too late, much too late – his gaze paled and twisted, the red washing out and the blue darkening, lightening, warping so that all that was left were greys and greens and blacks. Smoke poured out of mouths when they spoke and he would stumble, choking, as they wished him well, or congratulated him on this or that. He had no doubt that in their mouths their tongues were heavy, poisonous and unwieldy, leaden to the core, surrounded by rotting, flaking silver.  
  
Then, with his world coloured to match the Dark Lord’s house, he followed them, studied them closely until he knew their mannerisms – already half-learned from years in the same common room, at the same tables and in the dormitory – off by heart, until he could pick them out, one by one, in the very dead of night, when they made no sound and no sight in the darkness, shrouded by magic and design.  
  
Those were the little things, though, the incongruous things anyone could learn if only they looked; he wanted more, needed more. If he was to melt their wings, to pin their feathers down so they bled and writhed and were trampled underfoot as he rose instead, such minor things would not matter. He needed scandal, wanted something blasphemous for each of them; an unforgivable sin no one could refute, no one could dismiss.  
  
For months and months he loitered in corners and watched, patient and calm, studying and learning and quietly gathering information, so that by the time the reckoning arrived even their mothers did not know them like he did. It came, though – that day it all ended – sooner than he expected: dark and damp, a January evening, at the end of a meeting he had had no part in.  
  
There was nothing. He had found nothing. Time spent in jealous hope that he could usurp them so easily and simply had been wasted, and, at the end of it, he had not improved himself either; his research had suffered, he had nothing with which to impress and still no surname to ride on.  
  
The Dark Lord stopped watching, stopped smiling faintly, and started simply ignoring him, brushing past him as if he did not exist, preferring instead to place a hand on Black’s shoulder, to watch Rosier with that calculating, scalding gaze. It hurt, strangely, though he had not wanted it in the first place, and loss of it was the death of ambition.  
  
He had been stunned by Medusa: limbs of stone and a dead heart in his chest, and he wondered, daily, what was left for him? With both kingdoms lost, what was there for him?

* * *

_Interlude II: The Duel With Apollo_  
  
It was a barb – that much was clear. A challenge, of sorts: one he was expected to take up out of misguided pride, and lose for the sake of the same. The smirk on his opponent’s face, smug and knowing and filled with a pompous self-belief, made thunder crash inside his mind, inside his heart and soul as he seethed, accepting with a curt nod of his head.  
  
Who did Malfoy think he was? For all the blond hair might suggest otherwise, Malfoy was not a god, was not even a demi-god; no, ichor ran through his veins and his veins alone.  
  
Like gaggles of nymphs hiding in bulrushes by a lake, the watching crowd huddled back against the pillars, bone masks long gone; amongst them he could see Black and Wilkes and Rosier and Avery, and he thought, perhaps, that Rosier winked at him, that Wilkes mouthed ‘good luck’.  
  
He ignored it; luck was for lesser men, not him.  
  
There was a pause, much the same as before the start of any race – hungry and nervous, excited and childishly gleeful – and then the whistle was blown, the starting pistol fired, and he moved.  
  
His hands were quick and nimble, sure in their placing, in the way they moved, so much so that he barely needed to think of what to do, of how to do it. Without looking, he could create colours, smells, emotions; his mind jumped from step to step, from place to place, knowing instinctively what to do and when, how long to leave it for, when to pause, let the audience hang and hold their breaths, before stringing his bow again. It simply flowed out of him, swift and sure, running deep within his psyche, impossible to replicate or truly imitate. Practice would not create this, even if eternity lay at your feet.  
  
This was his gift, more than power, more than anything: this was his true blessing.  
  
It was an art, a skill he had perfected with time, caressed into being and passed down in his blood, from his mother. His birth-right, in a way, and one no one could deny.  
  
Soon, almost too soon, it was over, and he looked up at the king, at the god of the dead on his throne of ebony, and there was a smile. Small, curved and vicious, in truth, but it was still there, and it made the victory all the sweeter.  
  
As Malfoy stalked out of the room, flustered and flushed and furious, Severus Snape rose from the ashes, with wings of steel to match his companions, and his blood, half-ash, began to turn to gold.

* * *

Love was too strong a god, O King.  
  
_i_  
  
Once he had noticed, once he had seen, he could not rid his mind of it, could not fail to spot it time and time and time again, and the ring – white-gold and diamonds, a tiny trapped star to adorn a prince – glittered in the darkness, beating it back with a hard, proud smile.  
  
It was only a symbol of the truth, only a promise of what was intended, but what it meant was not hard to see. If one looked, it was visible in the way grey would meet green and thaw, how green would bloom at the sight of grey, how the boy, nymph-like and deceptively sweet, would gravitate, almost longingly, to the star, lost in his orbit long ago and forever called back without sound, without want.  
  
Somehow, amongst the darkness, they had created life, created something light and beautiful and warm, something so completely at odds with the gloom of their surroundings. It pulsed out of them, growing stronger as they grew closer, until Black’s skin shone with it, his namesake in the flesh, and Crouch smelled of fields and trees and freshly picked daisies. There was an innocence there, a joy even the Dark Lord, fearsome and cold and adverse to such disruptions in his kingdom, could not bear to destroy.  
  
As the light around them, in them, blossomed, and Regulus Black became more and more heavenly, more and more ethereal and beautiful and utterly untouchable, Crouch’s passion only swelled, and his zeal for the cause, for the future tripled.  
  
If he had been talented before, love made him brilliant beyond anyone else, the fire in his blood flecked with gold and burning so hot, hot as the centre of a star.  
  
Everyone else smiled, regarding them with looks which were appreciative if not wholly accepting (but what could they do, when Bellatrix, the Amazon Queen who bled gold and green, sat at the Dark Lord’s right hand and embraced Crouch, calling him ‘cousin’?), but he only scowled, only glared and sneered when they deigned to pass him by.  
  
He had no patience, no love for that kind of light: harsh and sparkling, like a candlelit chandelier, beautiful but lofty and so clearly not for you, not meant for you. It was pretentious and vain and so very self-indulgent; the day when they fell, when the star died and the nymph froze, he would rejoice.  
  
Truthfully, it reminded him far too much of what could have been, what he wished had been: the warmth of another’s smile, the joy and the light captured in a pair of green eyes, jewels strung out along strands of red hair, and a glow, the glow of the sun itself kissing along her skin, setting her on fire, because she was summer incarnate and he winter and so weren’t they suited? Wouldn’t they have been suited?  
  
She was gone, though, she who could have been Persephone, married to a summer prince, all hazel and gold and yellow, and Hades slept alone in his stolen kingdom.  
  
_ii_  
  
The words rang in his ears, Cassandra’s voice – Trelawney’s voice – harsh and heavy and laced with an unmistakeable taint of power, and he felt as though his head would burst, unable to contain the knowledge he held, the enormity of it weighing on him heavily.  
  
So, it was true, he thought, the Lord of the Dead can be defeated.  
  
Years ago, in his youth, perhaps, this might have brought him joy, made his stomach light and his chest ripple with laughter, his voice echoing around the walls of the descent down into the underworld. For with Death himself gone, his throne, his second kingdom, would be his for the taking, free to be his as it always should have been.  
  
Now, though, now his mind and soul had warped, changed into something black and dark and cruel, the light gone with her, wound about her wrists and her throat like jewellery she didn’t know she wore, and the thought of Death defeated made him pause. It set his heart to thudding, his arm burning as though crying, wailing at the thought of his master gone, and he tasted bile in the back of his throat.  
  
The throne room was empty, save for a single figure robed in black, bone mask covering his face, and the Lord of the Dead on his throne, his face waxy in the pale grey light.  
  
Kneeling, the bruises on his shins from where the barman, gruff and rough and with a glare that could stun a bull, had thrown him down the stairs throbbing, he rasped out the prophecy, all that he had heard, pleaded ignorance of the rest. The chill in the air whispered around him, a snake which slithered back and around its master’s shoulders, affectionate to him and him alone, and he wondered if he had just been judged.  
  
If he had been found wanting.  
  
Surely, though, surely this would be enough? Enough to save him, enough to catapult him amongst the stars, to make him something more, to give him the power he craved. He alone had had the skill to spy on Albus Dumbledore, he alone had heard the prophecy; without him, there would be no warning of the saviour, nothing to save them all from the ruin he would make of their dreams.  
  
On the throne, the Dark Lord regarded him, flat eyes boring holes into his skull, his mind ripped open for the his perusal, and then, finally, after so many years of waiting, so many years of trying, the Lord of the Dead rose and offered a hand, slim and pale, long fingers waxy and vice-like, with the grip of a corpse.  
  
There and then, with the warning still warm on his lips and the marks of his escape printed on his skin, the touch of his Lord’s skin icy and clammy underneath his own, he forged himself a new kingdom, a smaller but no less wonderful second kingdom.  
  
His, all his in name, and when the reckoning came, when their dreams took hold, he would have his queen.  
  
_iii_  
  
Around him, the wind raged and howled at the sky, ripping at his clothes and hair, the ghosts of the Furies, but no less savage and no more merciful. He did not belong here, was not meant to be here, and they knew it, wanted him to know, wanted him to leave and crawl back down into his hole, down into the dark pit he had carved out for himself.  
  
On another day, he might have gone; if he had come for another reason, he might have quailed and failed and fled, the wind snapping at his heels as he ran to the gates, to the chasm which separated life from heaven and death from life, but he had come for her, on this day, and so he stayed, trembling beneath the brunt of the storm, the magic of Zeus himself crashing and crackling all around him.  
  
There was no intent to kill, to maim or damage behind the storm: it was merely a show, fierce and strong, to give a glimpse of his power, to encourage those who were less brave, less foolish to stay away. The knowledge that if he held out a hand and caught a thunderbolt, felt it fizz and flash in his hands, it would not sear his body beyond all saving did not make it any less terrifying, did not make him any more hopeful of salvation.  
  
What did he have to offer? The trust of a god who did not trust? Secrets of a star and a nymph who blazed in darkness and day both? Whispers from the underworld, half-lies and half-truth and no way to tell which was which?  
  
He had begged once already: had knelt before the throne that should have been his, his wings crisped at the tips, and begged – worn his voice out rough and half-dead in the process. He had been accepted, but what did that matter? What did that matter when he knew that price which would, which could be paid? When he knew the Dark Lord would not hesitate to add another to the spectres in his palace, for the sake of security?  
  
The Lord of the Dead did not suffer fools lightly, did not suffer impurity lightly. His word on this meant nothing, merely a courtesy extended, not expected to be followed through, and so he had come, pride shattered and wings broken, praying for a mercy he knew he did not deserve.  
  
All he had here was hope. All he had there was despair. In honesty, he could not see much difference between them, as they twined together around his heart and throat.  
  
A burst of lightning struck the ground, flames rising and then dying and he flinched, jumping and falling on the ground as Zeus, thunderbolt in hand, cloaked by the storm of his own creation, landed in front of him, a blur of purple and blue and white: dark colours all, but infused with a warmth and a life the Dark Lord’s versions would never have.  
  
He did not know what to say, did not know how to approach this conversation. In his head, he had planned it out a thousand times, word for word, until he could recite it backwards in his sleep, but here and now, it had all vanished, his tongue still in his mouth.  
  
Love, he knew, was the key. That would be, had to be, the basis of his arguments. He was here for love, and the Headmaster, he was here for lack of love – or so the whispers said as they teased images of a Ganymede fallen, disgraced and stripped of his powers, of his grace and his beauty, and of the pain which had followed – a King in mourning even as a phoenix flew in the dawn.  
  
He had never admitted love, though, had never even claimed to love, only ever adoration for a girl who had never been his, and jealousy that she had not chosen him, in the end, and so he did not know what to say, how to make the King of the Gods believe that somewhere in his heart, in his soul, was a yearning for summertime: for roses and picnics and the bliss true happiness brought.  
  
Wormwood could not hide the taste of sugar, could it?  
  
There were no answers anywhere, and so he begged,  
  
“Please.”


End file.
